‘The Millennium Watch Book’ is a coffee-table publication looking back over the watch industry’s triumphs between 2000 and 2020. It’s likely to be interesting for both watch enthusiasts and newbies; everyone is certain to enjoy looking back on these ticking memories of the last 20 years of watchmaking.
It was a love of Montecristo No. 2 cigars that seems to have led Ken Gargett to one of Cuba’s dirty secrets, “At the end of the road, two men stepped out. They were friends of our crew. One called Ivan (I swear I am not making this up) took our birds. We were directed off the road into a makeshift parking area, half of which is filled with Ladas and the rest the wonderful old 1950s cars so prevalent in Havana. More than a few have government number plates.”
We are living in the modern race to the thinnest, and as records are set we have a bumper crop of incredibly thin watches that prove this competition may not be over yet. To celebrate the awesomazingness of these watches, Joshua Munchow has compiled a list of the top 10 thinnest mechanical watches, including a pair of historical pieces.
Ian Skellern and his wife serendipitously chanced upon “seeing” the aurora borealis while visiting Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and the excitement of that led to months of research. And that research led to spending a few days in the Arctic Circle in the north of Sweden. Here is what Ian has learned about the northern lights so far, some of it firsthand.
Ashton likes vintage watches so much that his prized possession is a 1978 Rolex Submariner Reference 1680. Why does he love this watch so much? Not because it looks like it’s from 1978, but because it is from 1978. So, he asks, is the current vintage trend something we should be wholeheartedly embracing?
When someone says “I’m no prude,” it is pretty easy to imagine what typically comes next: a prudish commentary on some aspect of modern society or youth culture. GaryG likes sex. There we go! To the point and leaves no doubt as to intent. That said, he typically tries to keep his interests in sex and watches somewhat distinct. But does the watch industry at large?
Graf von Faber-Castell’s new Bentley Limited Edition Barnato, the most recent addition to its Bentley pen collection that debuted in 2018, is an homage to Woolf Barnato, who was one of the legendary “Bentley Boys.” Nancy Olson has the lowdown on this pen world high point.
For Martin Green, the MB&F L’Épée 1839 Massena Lab T-Rex Bronze seems more raw and animalistic than its predecessors, as though you can smell the scent of this top predator moving through dense vegetation. He thinks that the true T-Rex variation has landed, and here he explains why.
Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977. This was a day of soulful heartbreak for Elizabeth Doerr, who knew she would sorely miss his voice. What she didn’t know back then was that Elvis owned a number of wristwatches, good ones. Here Elizabeth takes a peek at some of the watches he’s owned as well as a special watch he helped make famous: the Hamilton Ventura.
As these things go, Parmigiani Fleurier and GaryG go back a pretty long way. So it was with significant interest that he took up the opportunity to handle, photograph, and evaluate Parmigiani’s latest introduction, the Tondagraph GT. It’s a relatively rare combination of two useful complications in what the brand calls “all-occasion” packaging, and it is offered at a quite reasonable price relative to other pieces of its kind.